Isla Del Sol

So, we caught the boat after lunch to Isla Del Sol. Uneventful boat trip, nothing exciting to report. Once on the island we found a local guide



who took us on a hour long hike over some mountains to the ruins on the south of the island.




These seem to be run by some local women who collected the usual gringo tax to view the buildings.



Lots of crazy little kids around, all of whom assume that you have chocolate in you backpack.



You have to keep feeding them though, otherwise they get quite grumpy.



Finally, the boat turned up to take those people who were returning to Copacabana off the island.



Luckily we´re staying the night and after a long hike back to the town we settled into our hostel to catch the sunset on the mountains near La Paz.




The next day was a bright and early start, we hiked to the northen end of the island to take a look at some more ruins. On the way we bumped into a particularly unfriendly Llama - this one took great exception to me and decided to spit in my face...



Our route took us along most of the peaks of the island stopping off at the odd ruin here and there.




And another obligatory gringo tax - quite fortunate that we actually found this place as we had lost the train slightly and were going cross country.



After a long walk - about 3 hours or so



we came to the sight of the ruins. This rock apparently looks like a puma from the right angle - one can´t help thinking that perhaps the ancients were chewing one too many coca leaves.





Caught sight of a few eagles (?) near the ruins and managed to capture a couple of shots:




Then it was a quick walk to one of the southern villages, only to find that we´d missed the boat - we´d been told that it left at a variety of times, unfortunately it left at a completely different time.



Luckily we were able to get passage with a local guy on his boat and caught up with the boat back to Copacabana and made it safely back to the mainland.